197 - Are All Coups Bad? Do Militaries Provide Acceptable Alternatives to Tyranny?

            Should we, occasionally, welcome a military coup by ambitious and presumably avaricious officers, soldiers, palace guard commandants, and the like? In a perfect world, obviously, no one would want to applaud or encourage the forceful substitution of an elected government by a cabal of colonels, corporals, and other persons in uniform. But what about those regimes that are only technically elected, that are obvious electoral autocracies or even dictatorships, and that are well-known for repressing human rights and civil liberties? Conceivably,. too, foolish wars could be halted by the removal of a war-mongering tyrant.

            Can there be such an instrument as a good coup?  When Colonel Emmanuel Kwasi Kotoka, Major Akwasi Afrifa, and General Joseph Ankrah led soldiers against President Kwame Nkrumah’s increasingly corrupt and autocratic government in Ghana in 1966, did their coup d’etat serve the nation?  How about Capt.Thomas Sankara’s overthrow of a heavily compromised Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) civilian government in 1983, and his many progressive and very popular official attempts to improve Burkinabe life?

            Is last week’s ouster of a 56-year-old dynastic autocracy by Gabon’s palace guard a harbinger of good outcomes for the neglected civilian population of an oil- and manganese-rich west African country? Can the new rulers inculcate democratic practices where none has existed, except very briefly between France’s departure in 1960 and the accession to the presidency in 1967of the then Vice-President Omar Bongo (father of Ali Bongo, reelected as president last week in a tightly manipulated and overtly controlled vote).  Omar ruled zealously, marginalizing the opposition but becoming a loyal friend of France. We have not yet heard from new transitional President Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema, head of the Republican Guard and Bongo’s cousin, that his intentions in organizing the coup were benevolent.  All that has been said is that the Bongo dynasty had unfairly robbed Gabonese of their ability to develop individually and collectively. Too many, perhaps a third of all adults, are deeply poor despite Gabon’s comparative wealth and the clear deluxe lifestyle of the Bongos and those enjoying their favor (and benefiting from their many environmental initiatives). The country’s relatively high per capita GDP (about $10,000) has been ill distributed, with most falling into the pockets of Gabon’s ruling class.  (In Africa, only the Seychelles and oil producer Equatorial Guinea are wealthier; Mauritius and Botswana are almost as prosperous.)

            In contrast, the other recent African coups in Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, and Sudan were without redeeming features. Each was perpetrated by a military junta that overwhelmingly was interested in improving its own emoluments, improving access to riches, and seeking a continued hold on power (and to loot or at least bilk civilians). The Guardian asserted that the Niger coup occurred because the democratic regime of President Mohamed Bazoum curtailed graft and had been trying stop the soldiers from taking lucrative payoffs from people smugglers sending Nigeriens and other Africans north through Libya to the Mediterranean.

            The coup in Gabon was welcomed by citizens. But so have been at least a proportion of the 214 coups d’etat that have occurred in Africa since independence from colonial rule arrived on the continent in the 1960s. Very few have produced lasting benefits for democracy or social welfare in Africa -- not military turnovers in Egypt or Algeria, not even the welcome removal of hapless tyrants like Idi Amin in Uganda or Emperor Jean-Bedel Bokassa in the Central African Empire. And even the record of seemingly benevolent enterprises like the promising coups in early Ghana and Burkina Faso ultimately accomplished little.

             These latter putsches by soldiers aimed to make civilian life better in their respective countries. It is at least arguable that deposing incipient authoritarians like President Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana had the potential to give their countries improved opportunities to resume traveling along the democratic path that had been prematurely extinguished. Yet, even the most welcome enforced removal of corrupt, kleptocratic, civilian African governments has accomplished much less than advertised. Almost no overthrows of elected governments have ushered in eras of good governance. Imagining that there can be coups with positive outcomes is thus most often a mirage.  And the same conclusion applies to coups in Thailand, Myanmar, and dozens of other nations across the globe.

            After the 1966 removal of Nkrumah, it took years and a succession of coups for Ghana to return to elected democratic rule, after yet several further military interludes.  A French detachment ended Bokassa’s imperial reign, in what was called a coup d’etat.  Sankara was ousted by his military deputy in 1987; Burkina Faso has never again experienced such progressive leadership. 

            The African experience of military men (and they have all been men) interfering in politics is hardly salutary. Perhaps the Gabonese putsch will prove an exception to the rule. But it is the tenth coup in this decade and none of the others in the West African Sahel seem to have done much more than to transfer indigenous riches into the coffers of Russia’s Wagner Group. A bitter internecine war has engulfed Sudan in the wake of the failure of the leaders of two successive coups to share the resulting available resource wealth.  (The Wagner Group supports the upstart Rapid Support Forces against Sudan’s regular army.)

            Even questionable elections convey a patina of legitimacy to autocratic regimes like those in Gabon (and pre-coup Burkina Faso and Mali). The makers of coups struggle to gain legitimacy locally and internationally. They also struggle to deliver significant political goods to their citizens, and civilians soon tire of even the most promising officer-led juntas.

            Readers of this Newsletter, even if disheartened by such an analysis, might still think that there are places across the globe, even in Europe or Asia, where the military’s removal of a tyrant might be immensely beneficial locally and globally. There is always that hope. But such welcome surprises are rare and hard to arrange.  We cannot pin our hopes for peace in the world on a Russian putsch, something similar in Belarus, and effective internal upheavals in Myanmar, China, or other vastly autocratic polities.

If you wish, there are now ways of contributing to the support of this Substack newsletter. Many have done so; such contributions are very welcome.